


how light carries on (even after death)

by daggryet



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Derealization, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Dream SMP Ensemble, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 20:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30010374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daggryet/pseuds/daggryet
Summary: "so don't be a hero, my child, i know their fate. don't be a hero so that you may never die"He was supposed to be done. He was supposed to be free. He was supposed to move on.

But as long as Dream is alive, as long as Dream is breathing, Tommy will never be free. He can't let Dream win again, whatever it takes, whatever he will have to pay, he will do it. As long as Dream doesn't win, as long as nothing happens to Tubbo, Ranboo, Quackity, everyone.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Ranboo & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 2
Kudos: 79





	1. death is but one road to take

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will most likely divert completely from canon after Tommy's stream on 13/3. I'll try and get updates out every other day.
> 
> Please pay attention to the tags as they'll function as the trigger warnings. I'll maybe add more as the story progresses, but as for now they should cover what I have planned.
> 
> The first chapter is a bit more sporadic than any of the other chapters will be, it's more of a prologue, to be honest.
> 
> Title from Saturn by Sleeping At Last :]

He’s dead.

He’s dead, and it’s like he’s being shredded, like his very being is being torn apart - split into atoms, and slowly put back together again the way you would a broken glass. He wants to scream, even just so that the sound could distract him from what’s happening, but nothing comes out. He feels like he has a mouth, he feels like he has a face, he feels like he has a body, but also that he doesn’t.

He’s dead. Dream beat him to death. Dream beat him, and no one came. He doesn’t really remember dying, he remembers the pain. He remembers the potato hitting his eye at one point, he hadn’t really been able to see out of it after that.

More than anything he remembers the lava. Sizzling. Burning. Even from across the room.

He remembers feeling the tears of crying obsidian on his face. Or maybe it was his own blood.

He remembers Dream pushing him down hard one last time after Tommy had fought to sit up, and he remembers his head falling, falling, falling, fast, fast, fast, and then - nothing.

And then the pain started.

He’s dead.

He’s dead, no more lives, no more chances. He’s dead, and he won’t ever be able to get out of that dark, wet, scalding box.

He wonders if Sam will get his body out.

He wonders if there even is a body anymore, if Dream threw it away, dragged it into the lava. It’s so morbid to think about, what happened to his body, his _body_ , but he doesn’t really know what else he’s supposed to do here.

Here.

The afterlife. Hell. Limbo. Whatever this place is.

The pain of dying still sits deep within him, however that works. It doesn’t feel like he has a body anymore, yet he still feels like he occupies space.

He wonders if this was how Ghostbur felt every single day.

Ghostbur.

The afterlife.

Wilbur.

There’s darkness surrounding him, and as he moves there’s no sounds. He wonders how long it’ll take for his mind to make up sounds to fill the silence. It took a week for it to imagine Tubbo back in exile. He wonders if he even still has a mind, or if he’s _only_ mind here.

“Tommy?”

There’s sound. He wants to tear his hair out, it sounds so loud, like there’s an amplifier in this big, black void.

There’s sound, there’s a voice.

Wilbur.

He feels the impulse to turn around, but everything is dark and he has no eyes, so he just tries to reply.

There’s no voice, he has no voice, why does he not have a voice?

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “It’ll take you a while to speak, don’t worry about it. It’s just you getting used to being nothing.”

Nothing. Tommy’s not nothing. He’s something. He exists. He may not have any body, he may not have any matter, but he’s _here_ , he can feel himself in this void, he can feel there’s darkness - and then there’s him.

“I’m very happy to see you, though,” and Tommy can’t see anything but darkness, and yet - and yet he can still see Wilbur’s smile. As arrogant, and slightly unhinged, as it was when he was digging out the pit for Tommy and Techno to fight in. “I’ve been waiting for you. Your space has been ready for so long.”

His space?

Oh that’s right. There was a space growing for him in the afterlife. Wilbur told him that. After they’d- he feels breathless even though he’s not taken a single breath since he’d died - after they’d defeated Dream.

They didn’t defeat Dream. Dream was still pulling, pulling on his strings, pulling everyone in the way they wanted.

He’d written the waivers that had prevented Sam from saving Tommy instead of leaving him with Dream for so, so long.

He’d, somehow, rigged the tnt so it would explode when Tommy was prepared to leave.

He still had his discs, he supposed. What good they would do anyone now, he wasn’t sure. They were locked in his enderchest, never to be played again. 

Never to be used against anyone again. After so long, after exchanging hands so many times, he finally had them back. And he’d died.

He’d have loved to play them one last time.

“When you’ve been here longer, you can imagine music, pictures, objects - _me_ ,” Wilbur told him from somewhere in the darkness. Tommy wanted to frown. He could hear, but he couldn’t hear where from, it was like he had no depth perception. “It’s remarkable how brains lose the capability to imagine after you’re dead. Like they can’t comprehend the unimaginable happened.” A huff of breath. “It wasn’t even the unimaginable, I begged for it, I wanted it.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, and Tommy let him be. Not like he could answer him or anything, he couldn’t just tell Wilbur how much he’d missed him and how much he’d hated him.

He wasn’t sure if Wilbur even cared.

*******

He didn’t know how much longer it’d been before he could finally speak. It was hard speaking, it hurt, and it felt like he was pulled apart and put back together again every time he did. Like he was toeing on the line of living and dead, like the dead weren’t meant to speak.

“Do you know how to play solitaire?”, Wilbur asked, and Tommy almost tried yelling at him. Yelling made his vision whiten. He didn’t know what that meant, but it hurt more than talking so he tried not to. 

It was like back in exile, back then he also didn’t yell, it made his throat hurt. It wasn’t used to him talking at all at the end, much less shouting. It had hurt so, so much after Dream had blown up Logstedshire while Tommy had shouted, screamed at him to stop.  


He’d yelled at Dream to stop in the prison cell as well.

He remembered that now.

Just before dying, he’d asked Dream to stop, said that he felt weak, low, that he couldn’t keep going. The punishment was going too far. And Dream hadn’t cared that time either. He’d opposed Dream again.

“No,” he whispered to Wilbur.

Wilbur hummed to himself. “We’ll teach you that one once you begin seeing. It’s good to have a way to spend your time. It makes the time go a lot smoother here.”

“Do you spend your time playing solitaire?”

“Yes, of course. It’s the perfect game,” there’s lilt to Wilbur’s voice that wasn’t there before, and something tugs at the space Tommy occupies. Bad omens, he thinks. “It’s a beautiful game.” 

Card shuffles.  
Tommy feels his breath quicken slightly. He can hear things now. He can hear things, he’s getting used to being dead. Every second he’s here in this darkness, he’s closer to being dead for good. He doesn’t know why the thought still terrifies him, everyone’s dead for good once they’ve lost their final life. There’s no getting back. But he still feels terrified.

“So simple, minimalistic, and yet _so_ complicated. It’s fascinating. So many strategies, some better than others.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Tommy begins thinking of how Wilbur looks right now. Whether the manic glint in his eyes from the days he’d walk back and forth in the ravine is still present. Whether his eyes will finally be at peace, whether death gave him the peace he seeked.

“Many roads to victory, Tommy, but it’s all about finding the roads to consistent victory. One victory isn’t anything if the next defeat is even more damning.”

Tommy’s not too sure how much he likes solitaire anymore.

*******

He can see Wilbur now. He doesn’t know how long it took for him to adjust to this space enough so he could see him, but it feels like a long time. Wilbur says he’s counted five days, but how time works here, Tommy’s not sure. The days, Wilbur is counting, could be equal to the days in the real world - world of the living, he should say, this world was as real as the one before. This is where he’ll be for the rest of time - or if Wilbur just feels like five games of solitaire is enough to call a day.

He’s not even sure why Wilbur is counting. He asked once, and Wilbur said Schlatt liked to count. Tommy hasn’t seen or talked to Schlatt, so he can’t be certain whether that’s true.

He isn’t even sure whether it was actually how Wilbur looked in the afterlife, or if it’s just how his mind thinks Wilbur would look.

Wilbur looks happy, though, so he hopes it’s real. Well, most of the time he looks happy. Sometimes he smiles in a certain way, and all Tommy can hear is Wilbur asking him to be the bad guy.

He doesn’t want to be the bad guy. He never did.

Wilbur had been the bad guy. Tommy nearly became one.

He wonders, sometimes, if Wilbur would have thought him weak that he returned to L’Manberg after his exile. He thinks he would have, and somehow it makes him feel equally ashamed and proud of himself.

*******

“Will they still revive me?”, Wilbur had asked after what he said was a week, Tommy still couldn’t decipher darkness from darkness, it had felt like one never-ending eternity. “Now that you’re here, who would want me back?”

Tommy wants to shrug.

Tommy hadn’t even been sure he himself wanted Wilbur back. Wilbur had betrayed them all, Wilbur had lied to them, Wilbur had promised, and Wilbur had blown up L’Manberg.

“I hope they’ll revive Ghostbur,” he had answered. Wilbur scoffed at that, mumbling about how Ghostbur had been weak, so eager to please.

Tommy misses Ghostbur. Ghostbur had been there for him, he’d followed him exile, built Logstedshire. Ghostbur had wanted to die after Doomsday.

Tommy misses Sam. Sam who built him his hotel for nothing, Sam who listened to him and comforted him; Sam who didn’t let him out even after the seven days mark. Sam who let him die. Sam who had the power to do everything in the prison, Sam who’d wanted to protect him, Sam who’d wanted to protect the server, Sam _had let him-_

“Are you troubled?”, Wilbur asks him, looking up from his cards. He’s on his second game that ‘day’, whatever that means. “You’re fading.”

Tommy isn’t sure how Wilbur could be sure, Tommy hadn’t ever seen himself materialise in the first place.

“Thinking of death,” he whispers, it’s been getting easier to speak. Whispering doesn’t hurt, not anymore, “my death.”

Wilbur nods. “I’ve been thinking about that as well. Intriguing one, trapped in a prison with Dream.”

Tommy just nods, doesn’t think it good to interrupt him and remind him that this was his _death_ , not a science experiment they were talking about.

“All for the better, though,” Wilbur says while placing a card. A queen. He thinks that’s a good card. “With how much chaos we both brought the server, us being dead will finally allow it to be at peace.”

Tommy feels like his breath’s been stolen from him. 

No. No. Wilbur couldn’t mean that. Surely not-

“What?”, he whispers, breath coming short.

“I think it’s gonna be good for the server to be free of us finally-”

Tommy wants to slap his hand across Wilbur’s mouth, forcefully silence him, force him to never speak of this again.

He’s too preoccupied with gathering his breath though, there’s a faint drum in the distance. It sounds like a heart, but it can’t be-

“Please, stop talking about that, Wil,” he whispers, his voice coming out even weaker. It hurts to speak again.

Wilbur looks up from his cards for a moment, his eyes unreadable as he’s assessing Tommy. Tommy’s not sure what he sees, but he shrugs, turning his attention towards his game again.

“As you wish.” He sounds a bit sarcastic, as if he thinks Tommy’s overreacting, but he doesn’t speak on it again, so Tommy breathes a thank you.

*******

After a month, Wilbur tells him, Tommy imagines Henry.

He imagines a field, some trees, and Henry.

And for the first time, the black bends to his will. It’s still black, but he can _see through it_ , and there’s sunshine, there’s trees, in the distance he can see his summer house, and he can see Henry. It’d be so easy to just reach out, just walk through the fog until he’s there, and he could lay down there in the grass and be happy.

Something tells him not to.

It sounds like Dream.

He’s not sure why he still listens to Dream, and he hates himself for it, but instead he drifts down till he hits a bottom of some kind. He sits and stares into the picture for so long that Wilbur actually leaves his card game to come get him.

“You’re being weird, Tommy,” and it sounds like he’s actually concerned, and Tommy curses this afterlife out for making remember times when Wilbur cared for him.

“I saw Henry.”

Wilbur doesn’t comment on it, just walks back to his card game.

*******

“You remember when you told me you wanted to resurrect me?”

Tommy just nods.

“Well, I’ve been here for so long, alone, just playing solitaire, counting the days,” a pause, and a smile spreads across Wilbur’s face, akin to when he told him about his plan to blow Manberg to smithereens. “And I’ve been thinking about what I could do once you got Dream to cooperate.”

“And?”, Tommy prompts, trying to ignore the feeling that whatever Wilbur had planned for his return wasn’t going to be good.

“First, of course, I’d punish you for bringing me back against my will,” he says calmly, “blowing up L’Manberg will do nicely, I think.”

“L’Manberg’s already blown up.”

Wilbur looks up, eyes bright, he looks absolutely delighted. “Marvelous. Who did it?”

“Dream, Technoblade,” he takes a breath, “and Phil.”

A shriek of laughter. “Phil?! Oh, that is too beautiful to be true. I made him kill me for a crime he went on to commit, now that is poetry. Like Icarus, Daedalus fell from the heavens as well.”

Tommy wanted to throttle Wilbur. Him and Technoblade and their poetry, their myths and beautiful tales that they used to make the injustice in the world seem more fair. As if a crime that mirrored an ancient crime made it better.

Crimes were crimes. Doesn’t matter if a Greek hero had made the same mistake.

“What else do you want to do?”, he asked, dreading the answer.

Wilbur lays down another card. An ace. “Come play with me, and I’ll tell you.”

Tommy shakes his head. No. No. No.

“I’m not gonna play your stupid card game, Wilbur, I’m not playing any of your games.”

Wilbur shrugs. “That’s up to you.”

He lays another card in one of the piles. A jack. Something in the drawing looks like… looks like Tubbo?

He stares at it for another… however long, and then he turns his back to Wilbur.

It’s like the void can read his mind because sunshine slowly begins to shine, and as Tommy looks closer, he can see Tubbo and himself on a bench. If he really concentrates, he can hear Mellohi play.

He almost reaches out this time, almost goes through where he knows no one will be able to reach him.

*******

One moment, he’s arguing with Wilbur.

In the span of one breath to the next, Wilbur has gone from mocking him, mocking his distress, to once more asking to teach him solitaire - something he’s been trying to do for a month, to completely shutting up.

That’s a first.

“Wilbur?”

Silence.

It feels thicker than ever, the blackness feels thicker than ever - it feels like it’s swarming closer and closer and closer, like it’s choking him, like feathers, like sand, like gravel, closer, closer, closer, and he’s coughing, trying to get the black out. 

And then everything stops for a second. For just a second there’s nothing at all. Only the drums of a heart, and Tommy doesn’t understand what’s happening.

And then the black wants out. And it tears at everything that he is, trying to break through the space he has occupied since he died.

He’s exploding, imploding, he’s everywhere and nowhere.

He screams.

And then, after so long, there’s nothing again. An easy black. An easy pain.

“Wilbur?”, he whispers, and it feels differently to whisper now, it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all.

“Tommy?”

He screams again.

*******

He never wanted to die.

But he wanted even less to be brought back on Dream’s terms.

“Why couldn’t you just have let me die?”, he asks.

And Dream looks at him with the same smile he did once in the nether. “It’s not your time to die yet, Tommy.”

Tommy screams himself hoarse in an attempt to get Sam to get him out.

Dream laughs and throws a potato at him. It burns where it hit him, and he almost drowns himself in the water to get it to go away.

But Dream would only bring him back, and it hurts to die. It hurts so much.

*******

Some days, all Dream wants is for Tommy to talk about the afterlife. About the process of dying. Every second, every little pain, Dream says, is important to understanding the phenomenon that is death.

Tommy makes the mistake of telling him everything is so much _more_ now, and Dream yells into his ear. He lays as if frozen for the next day, Dream’s one shout ringing in his ears, back and forth like a pendulum. It tears his head apart, and he would have screamed had he not been sure it would make him throw up.

Some days, Dream wants to know what Wilbur said. Tommy just repeats his plea, that he won’t bring Wilbur back. Dream smiles and then tells him how much havoc they’re going to wreck on the server, of how many deserve to be punished for going against him. Dream talks about fun it’ll be, that it’s been so long since he last played a game.

“Rook takes knight,” Dream says, “and what happens then, Tommy?”

They’re a pair fit for each other, Tommy thinks. One plays chess, the other solitaire, and each one obsessed with finnessing their winning strategy. Going over every move, trying to figure out where their weak spots are.

Some days, Dream pretends that he’s going to take Tommy’s offer, that he won’t bring Wilbur back. Those days he barely talks about anything but exile, of how much fun they had together, of how worried he was when he found out Tommy had left; of how selfish he had been to turn against Dream, Dream who had so gracefully been there to keep him company. On those days, he talks about how much fun they will have again.

“We’ll go far, far away, Tommy,” he tells him, “they’ll never find us, and we’ll have so much fun once we’ve trained you out of your bad habits again. You were so good at the end, right before you left.”

On those days, Tommy looks at the lava and thinks back on exile. He had been too much of a coward back then, he was too much of a coward now. But it looks awfully more tempting.

Once when Dream gives him a hug, Dream has to forcefully drag him away from the lava. Dream’s yelling leaves him so lightheaded that he doesn’t attempt to do anything for a few extra days.

The day Sam shows up, finally, after an eternity, and Tommy finally leaves, Dream smiles at him in a way that he knows will keep him up for many nights.

On those nights, he’ll hear Wilbur’s laughter, “let’s be the bad guys, Tommy”, and he’ll see Dream’s smile, feel Dream’s hand possessively on his shoulder.


	2. if this is a dream, let me stay

It’s weird existing in the world of the living, he decides. 

He isn’t quite sure if he likes it or not. Walking, standing up, makes existing so much heavier, harder, than it was in the void. Here he carried around a body, when he closed his eyes and concentrated he could hear the drum of a heartbeat _inside_ his head and not outside. When he bent his fingers too much, it hurt. When he stood, he was heavy. When he moved, he had to actually move, and not just think about moving. When it was dark, it was completely dark around him. When it was light, the light was everywhere and not just from whatever hazed fantasy he had thought of that day.

In the prison cell, as uncomfortable as it was, as horrid as the company was, he could sometimes forget he wasn’t in the void. He could lie, looking at the black obsidian above, and if Dream stayed silent for long enough, he could almost pretend to hear Wilbur talk about solitaire.

In the void, he was darkness, he was nothing. He was something and nothing.

In the cell, he was barely more than that.

But here, following Sam out of the prison, he is so aware of every inch of his body, of the little itch on his arm, on the hair slightly too long getting in his eyes, of his feet moving. Every time Sam looked back at him, with that, that _look_ , like he wasn’t sure that Tommy really was behind him, Tommy wanted to both hide away and embrace it.

In the cell with Dream, they’d mostly talked. Tommy hadn’t really moved and staring at only the black obsidian, he could pretend to still be in the void. He could pretend that his body was liquid, that it was firm, that it was everything and nothing. Sometimes, when Dream was quiet for long enough, he could almost pretend that he could still hear Wilbur.

Wilbur and his solitaire. He never got around to teaching Tommy about it. About his many strategies, his many loopholes and traps. It was mostly Tommy’s fault, he hadn’t wanted to listen when Wilbur really got going, had gotten lost in his imaginations too often when Wilbur had wanted him to observe.

He’s had enough of games. He’s had enough of Dream’s chess, of Wilbur’s cards, of everyone’s back and forth.

He just needs to get out, he just needs to get back to his house, to Tubbo, to his hotel.

“Tommy?”, Sam says quietly, and Tommy blinks, realising he’s stopped walking.

It was weird that, when he got too immersed in his thinking, he’d just stop moving. Dream said it was probably because he forgot that he had a body. Tommy hadn’t really thought about it, but Dream was very observant, wanted to know everything about resurrection, kept the notes clean and tidy in his books, so Tommy reckoned his conclusions were probably right.

“Are you okay?”

An odd question, Dream had asked it too sometimes when Tommy got too lost in his head while recounting his experiences, and Tommy knows that at least Dream didn’t really care for him to answer honestly. Sam, Sam probably wants him to answer honestly. Sam had helped him.

Sam had left him.

It’s all so confusing, he has a body now, he isn’t just a mind, and he is getting out of the prison cell. Is he okay?

Every sound is too loud.

Every footstep too close.

Every glowstone lamp too bright.

He brings his arms around himself, hugging himself tightly, as if the hold can somehow keep all the sounds away. As if it can somehow keep a hold of his body, prevent it from running between his arms like sand if he just holds on tighter.

“No, Sam,” he whispers, his voice and throat still rough from disuse, he hadn’t really talked too much the last days. Dream seemed to think he’d gotten all his answers. Tommy doesn’t dare think of the implications of that being true. “I’m not _fucking_ alright, you left me! You left me in there with him!”

Sam stays silent for a bit, and when Tommy looks up at him, he looks like a broken man. He can’t see the other’s face, covered by the mask - covered just like Dream was, but his body language is all weird. Neck bent, breathing heavy, his grip on his trident strong.

Tommy keeps his eyes focused on that one. It doesn’t look like a throwing trident, but it’s been a long time since he saw a trident last, and he can’t risk Sam getting mad and throwing it at him.

He doesn’t want to be in pain again.

Not like when he died. Not like in the void. Not like when he came back.

“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” Sam says eventually, his voice soft, and Tommy almost lets down his guards. Sam sounds so sad, and they were, are, friends, and Tommy doesn’t want him to be sad.

But he’s been tricked before. Tricked by someone calling themselves his friend while being his prison guard.

He’s not going to be tricked again.

He knows Sam isn’t like Dream, Sam hates Dream, Sam validates him when his mind is confused, Sam allows him to talk about his feelings. Sam built him a hotel, for nothing.

Sam still _left_ him.

For _weeks_.

He shakes his head. “Just get me out, Sam.”

Sam’s grip on the trident relaxes, tightens, relaxes, tightens, and Tommy takes a deep breath, forces himself to stay calm. Sam isn’t Dream. Sam isn’t going to be mad at Tommy. Sam said he was sorry.

Dream said he was sorry. After a few days. 

“Please, Sam.”

Sam nods, and Tommy feels like he can breathe once more. He doesn’t let the trident leave his sight, but he’s getting out, and Sam isn’t opposing him. He does try to apologise a few more times, and Tommy feels each apology grate on him, and by the fifth apology he has to press his nails into his hands - just to ground him, so he doesn’t yell at Sam.

It hurts, just like bending his fingers does, like standing too close the lava waterfall.

Dream didn’t like when he stood too close to the lava. Sam probably won’t like this either.

He wants to yell at himself for that thought. Sam isn’t Dream, Dream isn’t Sam; Sam is protecting Tommy, is sorry for failing him. Dream hurt Tommy intentionally, Dream killed him. But he also can’t take anymore of these apologies, he doesn’t know what’s up and what’s down, and there’s so much blackstone around him, and there’s lava sizzling in the walls, and he just wants _out_ , away from Dream, away from all the memories of dying.

It’s when Sam apologises again, right before the last door. Right before they’re out in the hall where he can get his things and get away from here at last. Right before this entire nightmare could finally be left behind, something he’d never think about again except when it haunted him in his sleep. Plenty of things do that, and he’s been just alright. Nobody has to know what happened here.

It’s right then and there, that Tommy realises he’s angry. That his hands are still tightly clenched in fists, shaking slightly. 

It’s been so long since he was actually angry, since he could afford to be. Last time he’d been, he’d gotten killed.

“Shut up, Sam!”, he yells, can’t stop himself any longer, words rushing out like water bursting a dam, “just please, shut up! You left me, do you know what happened to me? Do you know what I had to go through in there? With _him_? What he did to me-?”

Sam nods, voice full of grief when he answers. “Yes, Tommy, he killed you.”

The words hit him at full force, and he feels breathless for a second. 

“He killed me, and you let it happen!”

Sam reaches out before immediately pulling back when Tommy recoils slightly. “I tried, Tommy-”

“Not hard enough, I died! I was dead for days, and you didn’t come back! You left me with him!” 

Sam nods, and Tommy feels the anger seep out of him, he doesn’t want to shout, everything is ringing, and he just wants to go home.

“I did,” Sam’s voice is shaky, “and I’m so sorry.”

Tommy didn’t cry when he died nor when he woke up, but he wants to cry now. It all feels too much, he’s almost free, he died, it was Sam’s fault, Dream’s laughter plays on rewind in the back of his head, and he just wants to go home.

“Please, Sam,” he whispers, “let me out.”

Sam flinches, and as he escorts Tommy out of the final portal, Tommy is reminded that was the last thing he said to Sam before dying.

Let me out.

He’s finally free.

*******

It’s night when he gets out of the prison, and Tommy almost wants to cry.

It’s night, everything is dark save for a few torches here and there, and it’s so quiet. There’s no mobs, no rattling bones, no hissing sounds, no guttural growls. It’s quiet in a way he hasn’t felt since exile but it doesn’t feel quite as painful this time. It feels so relieving.

His ears feel like they’re relaxing for the first time.

In this quiet even his breathing seems too loud, so he tries to minimise it as he walks. Every footstep feels too loud, so he tries to walk slower, more carefully. He likes the silence, he doesn’t want to ruin it.

In the distance, he can see the lights from his hotel. It feels like another life entirely. With a deep breath, he supposes it is. The hotel belonged to Alive Tommy, not whoever he is now, undead and not really sure where he starts and where he stops.

“Tommy?”

He turns around, Sam is exactly where he left him, a dark silhouette illuminated by the light from the prison and the purple nether portal. He looks both terrifying and tragic standing there alone, in front of his prison - his pride and joy, in front of Tommy’s would-be coffin.

“I’ll find whoever lit that TNT, I swear it.”

He supposes that is all Sam can do now. Find out who is working for Dream. He thinks back on that fateful day where they finally seemed to have beat Dream for real, everyone was present to learn about the revival book. He’s sure everyone’s lost someone near and dear to them.

Everyone was there except Phil and Technoblade.

Technoblade.

He feels like he’s been struck by lightning once more.

“Sam,” he says, voice shaking, and Sam’s head immediately perks up. “Whatever you do, if you find the culprit or not, just please. Please, don’t let anyone inside the prison. Dream’s dangerous, Dream’s gonna escape, please, Sam-”

Sam steps forward, hands raised in the air like a peace offering, trident nowhere to be seen. Tommy hugs himself tightly again, feels like his emotions are tearing his body apart, just like when he, when he- passed.

“Tommy-”, Sam starts, slowly moving towards Tommy, and for some reason it makes his heart beat so much faster, makes his breath go all shaky like Wilbur described it.

He shakes his head. “No, Sam, you don’t understand. What Dream can do- it’s not natural, it’s not good. I shouldn’t be here, Wilbur shouldn’t come back, Schlatt shouldn’t, and, and, and Technoblade owes him a favour, and Technoblade’s dangerous. Sam, please, promise me.”

Sam nods slowly, doesn’t come closer, and Tommy feels so grateful for that. It’s another way that Sam isn’t like Dream. An important difference. Sam stops, doesn’t seem angry that Tommy doesn’t want him near, and accepts what Tommy says. Dream would have come closer, would have hugged him tight, would have told Tommy that he was remembering wrong, questioning and disproving everything Tommy said.

“I promise.”

Sam doesn’t break his promises, just like Sam doesn’t break his waivers. Tommy’s not sure how he feels, but right now, with that in mind, he feels too relieved to care.

“Thank you.”

He turns away again, hurries away, doesn’t bother being quiet. He can’t get his breathing to go down anyway, so there’s no reason to be quiet. He’s being too loud to pretend that he’s not really here anyway, that he’s looking at everything from the other side like he did in the void.

He doesn’t want to be ambushed by any mobs, he doesn’t want to be hurt, bit, hit with arrows, poisoned by a spider bite, he just wants to get home, so he almost breaks into a run.

It’s both a blessing and a curse, he thinks, that he’s so close to the prison. A blessing because he can get home without anyone seeing him, without anyone asking him where he’s been, and him having no way to answer them. There’s absolutely no way that he’s telling them he’s been trapped with Dream, that Dream killed him. And a curse because as soon as he is outside his home, if he just turns his head, looks a bit past his hotel, his new beginning, he can see the prison.

Maybe he can ask Sam to have Sam Nook build him a wall between his hotel and the prison, obscuring it from view unless he actively looks for it. It’d ruin the view, but what view was that prison anyway, really. He didn’t really know what he was thinking in the first place, having the hotel built there. Right over that prison.

That’s a lie. Dream would have called him out on it if he was here.

He knew why he did it.

He’d chosen this place because of the dream that he’d be able to move on. That he’d build his monument, his pride and joy, on top of Dream’s old house, looking over Dream’s new house, like a pride rock overlooking the confirmation of Dream’s absolute defeat.

A child’s dream.

Only a child with no knowledge of the world would actually think, would actually be dumb enough to believe, that someone like Dream had been defeated.

*******

There’s a sign in front of his hotel.

A big sign, and he almost believes he’s somehow dreaming. That somehow his rescue, his leaving the prison, has all been a dream, because surely - surely not.

Surely Jack Manifold didn’t steal his hotel.

To the side, there’s another hotel. “Bee N’ Boo” the sign says, and that’s really not helping him in believing that this is truly not a dream. Because, they wouldn’t do that, would they?

It’s not that it’s hard to realise who’s in charge of a name like that, and he knows, he knows his best friend, and he wouldn’t do that to him. Tubbo wouldn’t make a hotel to rival his, especially not when he was missing without Tubbo knowing where. He wouldn’t do that, right?

But he also didn’t think Jack Manifold would steal his hotel. Not that he thought Jack Manifold wouldn’t seize the opportunity to get more power, but he didn’t think that Sam Nook would let him. He knew he’d sent mixed signals by first banning Jack Manifold, and then hiring him, but still - he didn’t think Sam Nook would have allowed it.

At least the Egg people hasn’t seized power over his hotel as well, and he supposes that’s a victory.

He sighs, carding his hand through his hair. Deep breaths, in and out. He should go to bed in his house, in his own bed, before he wakes up and he’s back with Dream. To be so close and then be dragged back, he’d probably ask Dream to send him back to the void.

He just wants to go home. That’s all he wanted, ever since he stepped inside of that prison to say goodbye to Dream forever. And now he’s finally so close. 

So he turns around, going back towards the path, ignoring the competing hotel, ignoring the pain in his gut at reading the name once more. It’s not true, it’s just a dream. It doesn’t feel like any dream he’s ever had. In his dreams, he feels like he did before he died. He feels normal.

In his dreams, no one would ever have stolen his hotel, and his best friend certainly wouldn’t have built a competing one.

It feels like there’s a man inside his head, scrambling all his thoughts around, and he can’t quite get a grasp on any of them. Everything is so confusing, it’s been like that since the TNT went off, but he thought it’d be better when he was finally free.

Is he free?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it's a bit of a shorter one, but it is a day earlier than expected so I hope it's alright :] thank you for all the love on the first chapter, very sweet of you guys!

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to, you can always come hang with me on tumblr: [daggryet.tumblr.com](https://daggryet.tumblr.com/)


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